In our three part series on the logistics of an interview at a prospective medical school, we went over the details of getting to the interview and the interview day itself. Now, let’s go over the (thankfully short) items you can do after your interview.

After the interviews with the faculty and/or students but before leave the campus at the end of your interview day, there are certain things you should do. First, do ask the dean of admissions or a member of the admissions office when you should expect to hear back regarding the status of your application, i.e. have you been accepted to the program, waitlisted, or rejected.

Second, do ask if thank you cards to your interviewers are appropriate and how you should send them to your recipients. Some schools will explicitly say they do not accept thank you cards of any kinds, others will tell you to send them to their admissions office and they will distribute them to your interviewers on your behalf.

Lastly, ask if update letters would be beneficial to your application. If they are, ask where they should be sent and what information should be included on them.

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In the first part of our three part series on the logistics of the interview, we went over the details involved in getting to the interview day, such as planning flights, ground transportation, and lodging. This article will focus on the intricacies of the interview day once you show up to the campus.

The Interview Day

Most medical schools will arrange a number of events for you to sit through during the interview day. The typical interview day includes an introduction to the agenda of the interview day as well as the program, speakers to further delve into the details of the program, interviews with the faculty (and sometimes students), tour of the campus and hospital if easily accessible, lunch, and closing remarks.

Even though you are only formally evaluated during the interview, you should be the best version of yourself at every point throughout the day. Be genuine, kind, and pleasant with the admissions office staff, other applicants, and anybody you encounter that day. People you meet that day will say phrases such as “oh, don’t worry, we’re not evaluating you, so you can be yourself.” While the former may be true, red flags that show up when applicants relax too much and lean towards acting unprofessionally. Anybody affiliated with the program can talk to the admissions office and severely impact your chances at admissions.

Given the sizes of the applicant pool, interviews are likely to be staggered throughout the day and may have two sessions, i.e. a morning and afternoon group of interviews. This means you may have the tour first, have lunch, then interview. If that is the case, you would have to be especially careful during lunch not to accidentally stain your outfit. All the work you put in that morning to make yourself professionally presentable should not go to waste because of a salsa stain from the burrito they served at lunch.

If you have scheduling concerns about the interview day, you should contact the admissions office as soon as you can. This includes needing to leave the interview day slightly early to make it to your flight. Many applicants fly in the night before, stay nearby for the night, bring their luggage to the admissions office, then head straight to the airport for a flight back home that evening. Admissions offices are generally understanding and accommodating of applicants and their traveling needs, so do not hesitate to reach out to them and ask if you can leave your luggage in their office.

Congratulations! You have made it through the interview day. It may not be the easiest feat to be the best version of yourself the entire day, so you deserve to treat yourself for a job well done. Perhaps on your way back from the city you are interviewing in you can have a nice dinner or drop by the local bar in the airport. In our next article, we will look at what you should and should do after your interview.

This is the first article of of a three-part series, "Logistics of the Medical School Interview"

By: Victor Lin, USC Keck School of Medicine

Congratulations! You have been invited to a medical school interview. What’s next? After confirming your interview date, the admissions office should send you information regarding the details of the interview day. This includes what time to arrive, where you can park, potential student hosts (more on this later), and more. Let’s go through the interview day step-by-step starting from the beginning in a three part series on the logistics of the interview.

If you live within driving distance of the program, then you’re in luck! You can just leave from your home on the morning of the interview and drive directly to the campus. Just how far is “driving distance” is up to you: if you can tolerate a couple hours of driving before having to spend a full day at the interview day, then you have a pretty wide radius for your driving distance. Otherwise, you can always drive in the night before and stay at a nearby hotel.

If you have to fly to your interview, that means you have to arrange airline tickets, transportation, and lodging for your interview. If you have not flown recently, then you may have to give yourself extra time for every step along the way. For airline tickets, I highly advise flying with Southwest Airlines. You get two free carry-on bags and you can cancel your flights without having to pay fees. The caveat with the latter is that your money is returned to you as credit for a future flight within the next year from the date the ticket was booked rather than money back to your credit card. However, you will most likely be attending multiple interviews during the application cycle, so the airline credits will most likely be used before they expire.

As for transportation, some prefer to use public transportation, others use ride-sharing services like Lyft or Uber. Personally, I chose to rent a car to have the flexibility of navigating to and from the airport and campus as well as exploring the nearby neighborhoods as I saw fit. Renting a car is more flexible than public transportation and less costly than ride-sharing if the airport is far from the campus.

In terms of lodging, many schools will voluntarily mention the possibility of rooming with a current student of their program. These “student hosts” are not officially affiliated with the admissions office and are offering their homes to prospective candidates free of charge. Out of common courtesy, you should bring your host a small gift to thank them for hosting you. Otherwise, this would be much cheaper than the alternative of renting a hotel or a home-sharing service such as AirBnB.

This wraps up the overview of getting to the interview. It might seem overwhelming at first to have to book flight, ground transportation, and lodging for every interview, but you will become a pro in no time after doing it for subsequent interviews. In our next article, we will go over the logistics of the interview day itself.

If you’re thinking of applying to medical school, then you’ve probably already heard about what a long and confusing process it can be. But you can make it far less painful if you plan out your path far in advance! Here’s a handy timeline to help you do it if you’re planning on starting Medical School in 2019 (Yes you should think about it this far ahead!):

Jan - Dec 2017 - Take the MCAT, and do other preparation work (see the chart)

Jan 2018 - Make your school list

March 2018 - Write your Personal Statement

May 2018 - Submit AMCAS Primary

July 2018 - Submit AMCAS Secondaries

September 2018 to April 2019 - Interview Season

May 2019 - Confirm and commit to a medical school. Waitlists will move significantly in May as students commit to schools.

Summer 2019 - Have fun!

Fall 2019 - Med School Starts

FAQ on Med School Application Timing

When should I start planning all of this?

You should plan and map out the application process 2-3 years before you want to start medical school. For example, if you wish to start medical school in Fall of 2019, then you should start planning in early 2017. Yes, this seems like a long time in advance, but as you will soon see - the process of applying to medical school is long and arduous. The reason you want to start so far in advance is that you need time to strategize and course correct if you need to. Time is an essential asset.

When should I ask for letters of recommendation?

A good rule of thumb is that you should ask them for a letter of recommendation within 6 months of the time that you worked with them, but the sooner the better. This is because they undoubtedly work with countless other students, so to maximize the chances that the letter will be personal, you should ask them for it while you are still fresh in their minds.

What if I don't plan on applying to medical school for a while? Should I still ask for the letter?

Yes you should! it’s okay to ask for a letter far in advance (years). You can upload it to a service such as Interfolio, where you can keep it until you decide to apply to medical school. It’s better to ask for a letter early and store it away than to ask for a letter late and receive a lukewarm letter that isn’t personal because your faculty member doesn’t remember much about your work.

When should I take the MCAT?

You should take it during the calendar year before you start the application cycle. For example, if you are going to start med school in 2021, then you will start your application cycle in 2020. This means you need to take the MCAT between January and December 2019. The rationale for taking it early is that you can course correct and make adjustments to your plan if you score poorly. If you take it in March of your application year and receive your score in April, then you don’t have very much time to change your strategy should you do poorly because AMCAS opens in May. One month just isn’t enough to re-study for the MCAT, and it’s definitely not enough to make other changes to your strategy - keep in mind that a change in strategy sometimes entails more than just a retake of the MCAT. You may choose to ramp up your extracurriculars, or seek new research pursuits if you have a borderline score where you don’t want to retake the MCAT, but you still need to strengthen your profile.

Can I apply to medical school while working full time?

Yes (I did that), but keep in mind that you will need to travel during interview season. If you know this, then you need to work this out with your employer in advance. Our recommendation is that you be open with your employer - many of them will be very supportive of you and will understand that you need to travel for interviews.

Victor Lin is an MD candidate at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He earned his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. Over the past five years, Victor has been helping pre-medical students develop well-rounded applications for medical school admissions. His past mentees have been accepted to medical schools such as Harvard Medical School, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and UC San Diego School of Medicine. His professional interests include becoming an internal medicine physician, teaching and mentoring, and conducting health services research. In his free time, Victor enjoys trying the diversity of food Los Angeles has to offer, testing new recipes in the kitchen, and going on day hikes to see breathtaking views.

If you’ve submitted your AMCAS primary application, then congratulations! You’ve just reached the first milestone of the long and arduous process that is the medical school application cycle. You should take a breather - but don’t get too comfortable yet, because secondary season is just around the corner, and many schools use secondaries to screen for interview invites. Here are some important things you need to know:

1. Secondary application questions will be sent out around mid July

They will start as a trickle - perhaps an email every 1-2 days...but they’ll quickly become a tsunami threatening to drown you in a sea of vague prompts and character counts. At the height of secondary season, you may receive 3-4 secondary invitations a day. This may not sound like much, but remember that each secondary contains anywhere from 2 to 5 separate essay prompts, some of which require an answer that is anywhere from 300-800 words long. I worked a full time job when secondaries were rolling around, and I can tell you that they very quickly become overwhelming when you have other responsibilities.

2. Speed matters

Many schools adopt a rolling admissions process - whoever completes their full application first will have their application reviewed for a possible interview invitation. This means that if you drag your feet on the secondary application, your application will sit in a pile of “incomplete” candidates rather than being considered for an interview. If your GPA and MCAT are on the fence, then this will be particularly damaging for you - as more and more interview spots are taken up, admissions committees will often be more selective about who gets the last remaining seats. This means they will be less forgiving about an applicant’s academic or extracurricular shortcomings. Even if your numbers are good, you still don’t want to sit on your hands while other applicants are getting their profiles reviewed for interviews!

3. You should pre-write your secondaries

Remember what I said about that tsunami? It will bury you if you attempt to write the secondaries as they come. The best way to deal with it is to prepare beforehand. Most schools will keep their secondary application questions the same from year to year, with minimal variation. This means that you can find the old prompts from the previous year, and write your answers to them before secondary season.

4. You don’t actually have to write 50 different secondary essays

While each medical school will be sending out a secondary with 2-5 prompts, many of them will be similar to one another. So while you might have 50 secondary prompts to fill out, in reality you only need a solid core group of 10 or so answers that can be adapted, shortened, or extended as appropriate. If you do this part right, you’ll be doing a lot of cutting and pasting to put together secondary essays from your core group of answers when the time comes - and you’ll have a fantastic turnaround time.

5. Here is a list of the most common secondary prompts:

If you can write a 250 word answer to each of these prompts, then you’re in solid shape for secondary season:

What is your most significant non-academic achievement?

What is your most significant community service achievement?

Describe a challenge or obstacle you've overcome and how it has defined you.

Ben Nguyen is an MD student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Ben graduated from UCSD in 2011, where he earned a B.S. in Human Biology with a minor in English Literature. Over the years, Ben has mentored many colleagues, friends, and fellow students in the medical school application process, and his mentees have been accepted to both MD and DO schools around the country. While Ben works with clients in all aspects of the application process, he has a particular passion for writing and specializes in personal statement and secondary planning and editing.

When he isn’t busy being a medical student, Ben reads voraciously, tinkers with electronics, practices photography, and cooks really good food for his friends. Ben is currently doing a research year with the Division of Cardiology at Keck Hospital of USC, and plans to pursue a residency in internal medicine.